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A realistic view of automation in Google Ads

Automation is very good at the parts people were bad at, and bad at the parts people assumed it would handle.

Good at

Bid adjustment at a scale and frequency no human matches, given enough conversion data. Finding query variations. Allocating within defined constraints.

Bad at

Knowing your margin. Knowing your stock. Knowing that last week’s spike was a PR mention. Knowing that a product is about to be discontinued.

Cannot do at all

Decide what is worth selling, judge whether the offer is competitive, or tell you the maths does not work.

What that implies

The job moved from adjusting bids to defining constraints and feeding good data. That is less glamorous and considerably more consequential.

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